


jughead and fred

by palaces_outofparagraphs



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Fatherhood, Fred is a good dad, Gen, WARM AND SOFT, absolute nonsense, coffee metaphors, fred talks to jug and laments on fatherhood, fred thinks about alice a lot too, fred thinks about fp a LOT, implied past serpent fred, is this EXACTLY like late spring summers but set in the morning instead of the night? yes, nothing happens in this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 21:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15715524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_outofparagraphs/pseuds/palaces_outofparagraphs
Summary: everyone's mad at jughead and he talks to fred about it. fred is everyone's dad. coffee is had.





	jughead and fred

**Author's Note:**

> heavy inspiration drawn from @jugheadjones i love ur writing friend

The Serpents had been living at Fred’s for two months, and he was more than getting used to it. Perhaps this was because they weren’t all crammed into the house anymore; his houseful of Serpents, as FP had fondly put it in the beginning, had become about two and a half rooms. Many of the adult Serpents had ended up returning to Riverdale, collecting their kids and moving them back into Sunnyside; others had shacked up with each other, scrapped together enough money to pay rent or pay someone to look the other way. Fred didn’t like it, he’d have them all if he could, but a lot of them left. And that was fine, he made sure they knew his door was always open for lunch, and they were in and out all the time.

Toni had stayed. Sweet Pea had stayed. Fangs had stayed. Summer was winding to an end, and he was so used to them in the house he thought he would miss all of them, not just Archie, when the kids went back to school. It was funny, that they had actually become friends -- for the first few weeks, no one could look at each other without someone attempting to throw a punch, and Jughead had to be present at all times in order to maintain the facade that this was working. 

Suddenly, in the blink of Fred’s eye (which, he acknowledged, was the equivalent of  _ multiple  _ blinks in his teenagers’ eyes -- Fred was getting old, he tiredly accepted, and the weeks all felt like hours now) they were friends. Or, more accurately: Toni and Archie were friends, and Toni appeared to be the resolute boss of Sweet Pea and Fangs, so Sweet Pea and Fangs didn’t glare at Archie quite so much.

What had started off as half a favor to FP, half a resolute fatherly refusal to let any teenager not have a bed to sleep in or meals to eat, had turned into, well, kind of what felt like adopting a bunch of extra kids. Which he had felt a lot of other times, throughout his life; it was how he felt about Jughead, for sure; Betty, too, in a slightly different way -- a would-be daughter was a different story, but he loved her all the same. Archie had been part of so many teams and clubs over the years that his house was always crowded with a dozen kids once a week and so many of them, too, he had taken under his wing and into his heart. They flitted in and out of Archie’s life, but lots of them knew there was always Fred to call on, if they needed to.

So, because of the past few months, and because of the past few years, Fred, as unofficial dad of any teen in Riverdale who might need one, was used to just about anything. Thus, Jughead - who was  _ not  _ living with him these days, at least not most of the time - in his kitchen over a cup of coffee at 6 a.m. was not entirely a surprise, but -- just like all the times FP wound up in his kitchen, when they were teenagers themselves -- it wasn’t entirely expected either.

“G’morning, Jug,” said Fred, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen.

Jughead jumped. “Mr. A.,” he said, scrambling in the way of painfully memorized habits from childhood, always justifying himself, his actions, his presence alone, and Fred cursed the person FP had become and stayed up until a few months ago, cursed him for raising his kid the same way he’d been raised, cursed him for raising his kid every way they both swore they never would. “I was just - I - ”

“hey.” Fred raised his hands in the air.  _ you’re safe.  _ “Hey. Calm down, Jug. It’s okay. It’s okay.” He approached him, still with the hint of a limp (bullets went in easy and came out hard, and pain left not at all). “Just wondering what you’re doing here so early, that’s all.”

“I just used the old key I used to have,” said Jughead. “Sorry. I know it’s early, I just - I needed to - I didn’t want to wake you up, but I needed to - ” he caught his breath when he realized Fred wasn’t going to interrupt, or get angry. Jughead  _ knew  _ that, Fred knew he knew that, but he also knew it took a minute or two for the fight and flight response he had engrained to deactivate, no matter who he was talking to. “I just wanted to come in here? If that was okay and, come here and  _ think _ \- I think better in here. Than in the trailer, I don’t know - ”

“It’s okay,” said Fred, again. “Of course. We’re always happy to have you, Jug.” He settled down in the chair across the table from him. 

“And I wanted to talk to you,” said Jug, like it was a confession. “I wanted to - talk to you about something that happened last night.” He took a breath. “it’s not like I can’t talk to my dad, I can, I  _ do  _ but sometimes I - I don’t know, I just, it’s not that he - ”

“Jug. Slow down.” Fred rose to make his own coffee, marveling briefly at the occasional simplicity of adulthood: how easy it was to see and sort through problems that, to him too, would have been impossibly complex and tangled at the age of sixteen. “It’s okay. I understand - your dad would understand, too.”

“It’s just a  _ very specific situation, _ ” said Jughead, in the voice of someone who had been rationalizing for half an hour to himself why he wanted to talk to his best friend’s dad instead of his own. “And I just thought I could - if you didn’t mind - ” 

Fred poured the water over coffee beans. On another day, he might make himself a pourover, but today instant coffee would do: he was still groggy from sleep, and thought he should be awake to listen to Jughead. “Of course I don’t mind.” He stirred his drink and sat down. In high school he would drown his coffee in cream and sugar, but since Mary had left, he’d had it black, and tried not to look at the symbolism of it all too hard.

For someone who’d never given much of a damn about English literature and gotten something under a 200 on the verbal portion of the SATs back in the 1980s, his life did seem to be awfully mired in symbolism these days.

Jug took a breath. “Okay,” he said. “Everyone’s mad at me.”

The simplicity of it, his voice shaking ever so slightly, cracked Fred’s heart down the middle and he felt familiar rage, the same kind of rage he felt if there was a hint that anyone was hurting Archie.

He really hoped it wasn’t Archie who had hurt Jughead.

“They won’t stay mad,” said Fred. This was true of life about half the time, but Jughead had suffered through a lot of things already, so Fred was determined the odds would be in his favor this time. Plus, if it was Archie, Fred just wouldn’t let him stay mad. “What happened?”

Jughead sighed, a sorry sound. “I punched Sweet Pea.”

“Oh,” said Fred. “Is that all?”

“No,” said Jughead. “It would be bad enough, though. I punched Sweet Pea because he made Betty cry.”

“oh.”

“And then Betty got mad because she said she doesn’t need me to punch people for making her cry, and also she said she wasn’t crying but she was. And then Sweet Pea also got mad, because I punched him. And then,” his voice wavered a little, “and then Toni got mad, because I punched Sweet Pea and because Betty doesn’t need me to punch people for her. And then everyone went home and everyone was mad, and I don’t, I don’t know how to fix it.” His voice was so tight that Fred thought he might cry -- Jughead Jones, homeless for far too long, victim of too much and too many, near tears because his friends were mad at him, his face working furiously to maintain the stoic layer that reminded Fred so  _ so _ goddamn much of FP.

It was all enough to make Fred want to wrap his arms around him and hold him tight, remind him that he was only sixteen and he was allowed to bend and break under the exhaustion of life. But he didn’t, because Jughead was sixteen and already felt guilty for not being able to confide in his own dad.

Instead, he drummed his fingers on the table, trying to figure out which angle to take. As he so often did, he decides to start with Archie.

“What about Archie?”

“What about Archie?”

“Is he mad at you, too?”

“Yes,” said Jughead, sounding exasperated. “ _ He  _ wanted to punch Sweet Pea.”

It would not be understanding, Fred reminded himself, to laugh right now. But  _ God.  _ He and FP had definitely gotten into fights before over who got to punch Hal Cooper for making their Alice cry, so he could picture this scene almost too well.

The division of who was a Serpent and who was a Northsider was the only thing that had shifted. But maybe back then, that division hadn’t meant  _ quite  _ as much.

Or maybe it was more easily blurred, Fred thought, his hand going almost instinctively to his right forearm, where once upon a time..

_ all in the past, now.  _

“Listen,” said Fred. “Almost all of those grievances are situational, Jug. And once the situation passes - like, for example, once everyone gets a good night of sleep - then everyone will stop being mad at each other, and you. Because it doesn’t sound like they’re all mad at you. Sort of just sounds like the group disintegrated for a bit.”

Jug brought both his hands down to the table, his face crumpling. “That’s  _ worse!” _

“No - no,” said Fred quickly, “no, it’s not. It’s okay. Groups, that’s what they’re like. Sometimes when you’re sixteen and everyone’s in opposing gangs.. things get difficult, Jug.” It was difficult to deliver the sentence with a straight face but he did.  “Anyway, for what it’s worth.” He took a sip of coffee. “This will blow over by the time everyone comes downstairs, and sure as hell sounds like Sweet Pea deserved it. What’d he say?”

Jughead sighed heavily into his own cup, his eyes looking, like they always did, decades older than he should. “He was being a dick,” he said bluntly, maybe expecting Fred’s eyebrows to hop off his face, so Fred kept his eyebrows steadily in line, and really was patently unsurprised. It was funny how teenagers thought adults went deaf after they were out of sight, how they thought it was impossible that any parent had ever heard their child say a swear word. “He was - the way he was talking to Betty - I can’t believe she expected me to let him just say that to her.”

A curlicue of fury spiraled through Fred, cousins with the crack in his heart of Archie and Jughead being hurt. It was more defensive, though; would-be daughters were different, plus, this was accompanied, modulated even by the measured but resolute and unyielding protectiveness he felt for Sweet Pea, Sweet Pea who reminded him far more of FP at sixteen than Jug did, so much that it made him ache. “The Cooper women like to stand up for themselves,” he said, instead of any of this. “What did he say, though. If you want to say.”

“Just stuff about her dad,” said Jughead. “Stuff about how did you and your mom never notice, typical Northsider, take care of your own, and then, and then he said I was only dating her for some - ” he caught himself, glancing up at Fred stressedly. “He said something I can’t say.”

Fred thought about the things they used to say to Alice about dating Hal and felt a brief stab of regret before remembering that Hal had literally shot him. It was difficult, near on impossible to reconcile the boy he’d grown up with, Hal Cooper from church and Boy Scouts and baseball and Alice, Alice’s Hal, and the man rotting in a jail cell somewhere, the man who had threatened his own daughters, who had shot him, who had nearly burned the whole town down.

Out of all of them, he wouldn’t have expected Hal.

Fred looked at Jughead turning his hat around in his hands, thought of Betty and North and South and everyone mad at everyone else and coffee and an incorrectly applied tattoo that had mostly faded from his arm, thought of the spaces in between everyone, and he thought  _ nothing ever changes around here. _

It was almost a good thing.

“You’re dating Betty because you love her,” he said, “and Betty is dating you because she loves you. North and South don’t matter as much as we all pretend they do, and even if they did you two wouldn’t care.” He took a sip of coffee, wondering where he had gathered his wisdom, wondering if any of it was true. “Sweet Pea is an angry, tired teenager just like you, and he didn’t mean it. The Cooper women like to pretend they’re not crying but Betty will forgive you. Everyone else has probably forgotten by now. Why didn’t Veronica come?”

Jughead shrugged. “Veronica doesn’t really like hanging out with Sweet Pea and Toni. It’s weird, but it’s fine.”

“But it’s fine,” echoed Fred. “Okay.”

“So,” said Jug, “it’ll - be okay?”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s okay,” the words came in a rush, “it’s okay I didn’t talk to my dad about all this? It just all sounds so  _ stupid  _ when I say it aloud, and I’m just - I’ve just told you, like - I don’t know.”

“Jug,” said Fred. “I promise. It’s fine.”

The tension drained out of Jughead’s face. He finished his coffee and there was that smile, the one that made Fred’s heart ache - but what didn’t make Fred’s heart ache these days? It was all right, in time, it would be all right. As long as he kept the kids in clothes and fed, everything would work out, and if the definition of “the kids” broadened and broadened until he was taking care of everyone, anyone at all. 

Just as Jughead set his mug down Archie came ambling down the stairs into the kitchen, wiping sleep out of his eyes. “G’morning, Dad,” he said, plopping into his usual seat. He didn’t look remotely surprised to see Jughead. “Morning, Jug.”  
“Morning, Andrews,” said Jughead, looking the tiniest bit nervous.

Archie looked at him for a second as if trying to remember something, then his face tautened briefly, then relaxed. “Sweet Pea’s an ass sometimes,” he said conversationally.

“He is,” said Jughead. “But I shouldn’t have - ”

“Nah. You did the right thing. Betty won’t be mad anymore either. She was mostly mad at Sweet Pea anyway.” Archie tipped his chair back, looking at the ceiling, and Fred wondered if he would apologize. “Anyway listen I don’t care if you have any plans ‘cause we’re playing Fortnite  _ all freaking day  _ okay?”

That was as close as he would get, and it was more than enough for Jughead, who’s smile was so big now ((that he hardly looked like FP at all, such a sad thought Fred banished it from his breakfast table.)) “Okay cool,” he said, “but let’s have the girls over too because I think Sweet Pea and Toni said they were going down to the quarry so Veronica will come.”

“How come we’re not invited to the quarry?”

“Do you  _ want  _ to go to the quarry?”

Leaving them to their devices Fred got up to start breakfast. The rest of the kids would  come down soon, after all. He wanted there to be food on the table when they did.

  
  


The End


End file.
